Nile Gardiner is a Washington-based foreign affairs analyst and political commentator. A former aide to Margaret Thatcher, Gardiner has served as a foreign policy adviser to two US presidential campaigns. He appears frequently on American and British television, including Fox News Channel, BBC, and Fox Business Network.

David Cameron should hold an EU referendum and give the British public the final say on Europe

David Cameron should stick to his 'cast-iron' promise and hold a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU. (Photo: AFP)

David Cameron and William Hague have firmly rejected calls for a referendum on British membership of the European Union. In the words of the Foreign Secretary, “our place is in the European Union,” even if the EU single currency “is a burning building with no exit.” Both Cameron and Hague abhor the idea of 'ever closer union,' but in denying the British public a direct say on their future in Europe, Britain’s political leaders are going against the tide of history, as well as public opinion in their own country.

Self-determination is on the rise almost everywhere across the world, with the notable exception of the EU, where unelected bureaucrats sit in splendid isolation, yet still believe they can speak for hundreds of millions of people without an ounce of democratic accountability – to the extent that the president of the European Council feels he can proclaim that the EU is “the fatherland of democracy.”

The principle of national sovereignty should be at the very heart of a conservative foreign policy, and is intricately tied to Britain’s future prosperity and competitiveness. The British people should be free to determine their destiny, and be given a choice whether or not they wish to belong to a supranational political entity that has a huge impact on their everyday lives through a mountain of red tape and regulation. Unsurprisingly, nearly three fifths of Britons (57 percent) believe that EU membership has been negative for the UK, and almost half (49 percent) would vote to abandon the EU in contrast to just 25 percent who would vote to stay, according to polling by Angus Reid.

The idea that Britain is being sucked into an evolving European superstate is not a myth. The EU now has its own president, foreign policy chief and diplomatic corps, has complete control over member states’ power to enter into trade negotiations, and even has a voice at the United Nations as though it were a nation state. There has already been a monumental transfer of powers from London to Brussels, and the British electorate should be given the opportunity to vote on its relationship with the EU for the first time since 1975.

In an op-ed piece for The Sun in 2007, written as leader of the Opposition, David Cameron condemned Gordon Brown for refusing to hold a referendum on the European Union Treaty, declaring that he had stuck two fingers up to the British public over the EU in “the arrogant belief that he – and only he – has the right to decide what’s best for Britain’s future":

Giving people freedom and control over their lives is one of the things that makes me a Conservative. And it is why from the moment the EU Constitution was dreamt up by elites in Brussels, the Conservative Party's squadron was first in the air, demanding a referendum in this battle for our country's future.

If you really want to signal you're a break from the past, Prime Minister, do the right thing — give the people the referendum you promised.

Today, I will give this cast-iron guarantee: If I become PM a Conservative government will hold a referendum on any EU treaty that emerges from these negotiations. No treaty should be ratified without consulting the British people in a referendum.

Four years on, and a general election later, there has been no UK referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon, and the centralised power of Brussels continues to grow. Mr Cameron has an opportunity to go down in history as a principled leader, who gave the British people a say in shaping of their destiny. The European project is turning into a nightmare, and we are seeing the results of its folly in the financial contagion spreading across the EU and the possible collapse of the Euro.

Great Britain has witnessed the steady erosion of its sovereignty and freedom, with the deathly hand of Brussels stifling Britain’s ability to trade freely and act independently on the world stage. A proud nation that won two World Wars, defeated the scourge of Nazi Germany, and helped force the Soviet Empire to its knees now has its counter-terrorism policies dictated by a faceless 'human rights' court in Strasbourg, and lacks the freedom to even negotiate a trade agreement with its closest allies such as the United States and Australia.

Margaret Thatcher put it best when she warned in a speech to Conservatives in Plymouth in May 2001 that “the greatest issue before our country is whether Britain is to remain a free, independent, nation state, or whether we are to be dissolved in a federal Europe.” A decade later Mr Cameron would do well to heed the warnings of the greatest Prime Minister of the post-war era, as Britain is faced with a mounting crisis in continental Europe that threatens to drag Britain down as well. And as the Iron Lady noted in one of her later speeches, at the Hoover Institution in California, in an address appropriately entitled ‘A Time for Leadership’:

Britain's integration within a European superstate is unacceptable to me, because it means the loss of our freedom, of our independence and ultimately of our identity. But it would also represent a willful refusal to seize the opportunities offered to us. In this twenty-first century the dominant power is America; the global language is English; the pervasive economic model is Anglo-Saxon capitalism – so why imprison ourselves in a bureaucratic Europe?